"I rarely play somebody that doesn’t have a breakdown," says actress Jessica Hecht.

Hecht has played a series of ladies torn by inner conflicts, most recently Blanche duBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire" at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Now starring opposite Jim Parsons in "Harvey," which opened in a new Broadway production on Thursday, the Princeton native is taking a different tone altogether, finding the humor in hysteria.

Mary Chase’s "Harvey," which received a Pulitzer Prize in 1945, centers on Elwood P. Dowd, a friendly bachelor whose best friend happens to be an invisible (possibly imaginary) rabbit who stands more than six feet tall. The play was made into a 1950 film starring James Stewart.

In the new production directed by Scott Ellis, Hecht plays Veta Louise Simmons, Elwood’s sister, a part that once earned Helen Hayes a Tony nomination. When Veta tries to have Elwood committed, her nerves are so frayed — and Elwood so calm, so apparently "normal" — that the doctors believe she is the mental patient in need of treatment.

"I think she’s been raised with this very puritanical sense of how to hold yourself," Hecht says.

When the play begins, Veta is grooming her daughter Myrtle (Tracee Chimo) for a high-society party where she can meet the man of her dreams. Myrtle is at the point in her life where Veta, whose husband has died, wishes she were, Hecht says. Harvey’s appearance ruins the party. And despite her love for her brother — who technically owns the house they all live in — Hecht acts to preserve Myrtle’s social life.

gawky characters

Hecht’s mother is a therapist and her stepfather is a psychiatrist, which lends the actress an interesting perspective on her character — particularly the scenes in which Veta claims, with a mixture of indignation and pleasure, that she’s been touched by the orderly who helped her into the hydrotherapy tub. She sees some of her scenes as a portrayal of hysterical women, with Freudian resonances.

"She has a lot of yearnings that are completely pent up," says Hecht.
Once something taps into these yearnings, though, "It’s like a corkscrew, everything is let loose."

In the sanatorium, the cast of characters grows to include Charles Kimbrough, Carol Kane and Rich Sommer (of "Mad Men"), among others.

Hecht last appeared on Broadway in "A View from the Bridge" with Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber and is also known as Susan from "Friends" and from films including "Sideways" and "Dan in Real Life."

"I really love playing characters who are at odds with themselves," she says.

She made her Broadway debut in "The Last Night of Ballyhoo" in 1998, playing Lala, another character who didn’t quite fit into her social surroundings or her body.

"I was a really gawky teen in my own mind — I was so tall and lanky" she says.

"I remember having similar feelings — how in the world am I going to sit in this dress? I think it’s always the physicality that allows me to figure that stuff out."

Hecht learned how to work her long, slender limbs through modern dance and acting study at New York University. But she also credits experience with her ability to get into the physical comedy of a woman like Veta, who at one point in this production longingly wraps a leg around one of her costars.

Part of that is "transforming" into varied characters, but she also points out that running around New York with her kids Stella, 13, and Carlo, 11, has instilled a certain amount of stamina.

Since 1995, Hecht has been married to "Breaking Bad" director Adam Bernstein and she appeared on the show as Gretchen Schwartz. Her characters’ love lives are rarely so happy, she notes, citing Olga from "Three Sisters" and Portia from "Julius Caesar" as examples.

"I think that to play those characters, you just have to play the part of wanting the person to love you. I think the key is just to have the great expectation that things will turn around, that something has to happen."

today’s ‘harvey’

Despite previously having had to portray heartbreak night after night, it is "Harvey" that Hecht thinks is the most tiring of all the plays she’s done — and not just physically.

"Comedy takes a certain kind of psychological concentration and freedom at the same time," she says. "If something doesn’t land, you have to reorient yourself and make the next thing land.

"The dramas that I’ve done are very grueling, but once you figure out where it comes from in you, then you go out every night and you punch those buttons and there you are, expressing this pain of existence and all of that.

"It’s very cleansing," she adds.

Hecht appeared in "Harvey" before, but in the smaller role of Nurse Kelly (Holley Fain in the current version) in a 1998 televised production. Even then, she thought that Veta, played by Swoosie Kurtz, was a "delicious" role.

"This is one of those great plays you can approach from the lens of whichever character you’re playing and the play kind of morphs into something else," she says.

Time changes the context of the play as well. Even if our social world today doesn’t necessarily revolve around formal parties like Myrtle and Veta’s did, we’re still just as aware of the desire to fit in — with social media making our interactions increasingly public, maybe even more so. Quirks stand out, real or imagined, small or six feet tall. And in the end, it’s refreshing when Veta says that’s okay.

"I do think it’s ultimately about something very pure, which is just loving someone enough to say, that’s who you are and we don’t need you to be ‘normal,’ " Hecht says.

At the same time, the simple appeal of an uplifting diversion hasn’t faded. As Hecht notes, the playwright wrote the piece for a neighbor who lost her son during World War II.

"Mary Chase really wanted to write something that would make her laugh, that was so full of whimsy and heart," she says. "I just think it’s an incredibly well-devised distraction from our lives."

'Harvey'
Where: Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St., New York
When: Today through June 29, Sundays at 2 p.m.; Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2. and 7 p.m. From June 29: All evening shows at 8 p.m.
How much: $37 to $127, call (212) 719-1300 or visit roundabouttheatre.org